Although the Progressive era was successful in addressing many issues in the United States at that time, the benefits of Progressivism were mostly limited to white Americans. In what ways did the Progressive Era also promote discriminatory policies and support intolerant ideas?

Though Progressive reformers achieved many noteworthy goals during this period, they also promoted discriminatory policies and espoused intolerant ideas. The Wilson administration, for instance, despite its embrace of modernity and progress, pursued a racial agenda that culminated in the segregation of the federal government. The years of Wilson’s presidency (1913-1921) witnessed a revival of the Ku Klux Klan and a viciously racist backlash against the economic and political gains of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction period.

Labor unions, which were very active in Progressive politics, supported restrictions on immigration and spewed xenophobic rhetoric that blamed immigrants for low wages and harsh working conditions in factories across the nation. Federal immigration policies in the Progressive Era, including the Immigration Act of 1917 and the National Quota Law of 1921, severely limited immigration based on nationality, and excluded virtually all Asian immigrants.

In line with their view of human nature as capable of being engineered and manipulated, many Progressive reformers advocated selective breeding, or eugenics. Eugenics was considered “the science of better breeding” and aimed to improve the genetic quality of the human population through policies that would encourage the more “desirable” elements of society to have more children while preventing “undesirables” from reproducing. Eugenics was based on a racial and class hierarchy that placed white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants at the top. Lower classes, ethnic minorities, recent immigrants, the mentally ill, and the developmentally disabled all occupied lower rungs on this hierarchy. In 1907, the United States became the first country to pass a compulsory sterilization law.

The genocidal policies of Nazi Germany ultimately discredited the “science” of eugenics, but not before over 60,000 American men and women were forcibly sterilized to prevent them from having children.

Kievan Russia's decline was marked by the emergence of powerful autonomous principalities and warfare among their princes. Kiev Rus became an increasingly complex state containing numerous principalities that engaged in political and economic competition; dynastic and ecclesiastic bonds provided cohesion among them.

During the eleventh and twelve century princely administration gradual replaced tribal allegiance and authority. Each prince maintain and commanded his own military force. As the dynasty grew larger its system of succession required revision. Controversy arose over the standards of eligibility and the lands subject to succession.

The changing political structure contributed to repeated dynastic conflicts over succession to the Kevian throne. Some princes became ineligible for the succession to Kiev and concentrated on developing their autonomous realms. Kiev was sacked two more times in 1203 and 1235. The conflict revealed the divergence between the southern and western principalities, which were deeply entangled in the conflicts over Kiev, and those of the north east, which were indifferent to them.

Kiev lost its central role, and Kievan Russia was disintegrating and left without effective defenses by the time of the Mongolian invasion of 1237.